Travel Advice

Hello everyone!

I am a new poster, but a long time reader of the forum. :wave: I have a lovely lionhead lop house rabbit called Ozzy who will be 3 in a couple of weeks. I am due to move house- quite a big move from south London to Staffordshire (200 miles, about 5 hour car journey). I wondered if anyone had any tips for travelling? Ozzy has never travelled any distance before, and he's quite highly strung- he's already had one episode of gastric stasis which thankfully he pulled through.

Basically I'm looking for advice to make his journey as stress free as possible and to minimise the risk of any problems?

Thankyou everyone!

I would just put lots of hay into his carrier cover it over and make sure it is wedged in well so it won't fall over. Bottles drip too much when travelling so perhaps have some wet greens ready for now and then. He should be ok as once the car starts they normally settle down. Hope the journey goes well.

Hi there,

I can totally sympathise. We moved from Norwich to Staffordshire with our bunnies and I was absolutely paranoid about it!

None of them were bonded so we put them in individual carry cases which were padded with towels and filled them with hay. We then covered the case with a towel and placed them behind the the footwells behind the passenger and driver seat as well as having one in the footwell of the passenger seat. I wouldn't recommend the latter as its a bit closer to the engine so if he's nervous best to put him in the back, or if you have a passenger have the carry case on his lap.

We stopped every so often to give them wet greens and we had a bottle of water that we decanted into a small bowl and offered to them.

They were absolutely fine when we got to the other end and we had weighed out their nuggets and put them in sandwich bags which were in my handbag so we could feed them when we got to the new house. I also had in my handbag the emergency bunny kit consisting of syringes, metacam, gut motility and critical care just in case they did get stressed and we had easy access to what we would need rather than having to hunt through boxes.

I also registered the bunnies with a vets in Staffordshire a few days before we moved so if we needed anything for them, there would be less stress.

Thankyou for the advice! Is there a particular vet in Staffordshire that you'd recommend?